Re: Using netware/ids to login to Oracle

Are you using Netware 4.x? Also what version of Oracle server are you running? If you're not running Netware 4.x or better, then this won't help you.

If you are using Netware 4.x and Oracle 7.2 or higher, you can authenticate through NDS (Novell Directory Services). This is really slick and works well with Oracle 7.2 and higher. If the person is authenticated to your tree and configured correctly to authenticate to Oracle via NDS (see below), then Oracle automatically authenticates the user with the NDS info.

Okay, I'm going by memory here so I hope I don't forget anything. Also, if you aren't your site's Netware admin as well, you will need this person's assistance with the NDS parts of this procedure.

You need to obtain the NWAdmin snapin from the Oracle CD (I think you can also install them from the Oracle Installer) and configure an Oracle instance object in NDS. In this NDS object, you give users on your NDS tree rights to login to the Oracle instance. Once this is done, you need to make sure that the remote os authent prefix parameter in the INIT.ORA is set to "". Set the desired user objects in Oracle to authenticate EXTERNAL.

On the command line for a program, you specify null user name and password. In other words, to invoke SQLPlus and authenticate through NDS, I would use the following in the command line for my windows shortcut:

d:\orant\bin\plus33w.exe /@mydb

Where mydb is the SQLnet v2 service name.

There is one gotcha you might run into. If you ran the Oracle install and you got a message about not being able to extend the NDS schema, then the NWadmin snapin will fail to create an NDS object for the Oracle instance because the object class hasn't been added to the NDS schema. For some reason, if you don't have a replica of the NDS database on your Oracle server when you do the install, the installer on the server fails to extend the schema. If this was the case, copy ORASCHEM.NLM from the NLM directory on your Oracle server to a server that has a master replica of the partition where your Oracle server resides. All you should have to do is issue:

LOAD ORASCHEM at the console prompt. This will extend the schema. You will also be in this situation if you had installed Oracle on a Netware 3.x server and then later upgraded to Netware 4.x. Once again, you can use ORASCHEM.NLM to extend the schema.

Sorry for the complexity but if you or someone you know can set this up, it's definitely worth it! You still have to create user objects in Oracle, but not having to worry about two sets of passwords is definitely worth the time spent setting it up.

Hope that helps.

Steven Moyano (Steven Moyano) wrote:

> Does software exist to allow Oracle to use the netware id and password? We are
> trying to avoid making out clients login twice or manually maintaining two
> sets of passwords.
>
> Thanks in advance for your time and help.
>
> Steven Moyano
> Northwestern University, Evanston, IL. USA
> Steven Moyano <smoyano_at_NWU.EDU>
Received on Thu Sep 03 1998 - 00:00:00 CDT